54 — Making the eyes sing — Photography podcast

September 28, 2008 By 5 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #54 talks about how to make the eyes sing in a pho­to­graph. When we take a photo of a per­son or some­thing that has eyes, we really need to pay atten­tion to what we are doing. The eyes are nor­mally the most impor­tant part of any por­trait and they need to be sharp and bright. Through a few basic tech­niques this pod­cast tells you what you need to do to get your subject’s eyes to ‘sing’.

Even in this medium range shot you can see sharp bright eyes

Even in this medium range shot you can see sharp bright eyes

The bulldogs eye sings because the iris is sharp and bright

The bulldog’s eye (stock) sings because the iris is sharp & bright

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
The eyes have it thread from the pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Acces­sories pod­cast (check image of the light stand hold­ing reflec­tor with magic arm)
A dodg­ing tech­nique for the eyes described in para­graph 2 of the post
Gary Fong dif­fuser at B&H
Pod­camp Mon­treal
CC Chap­man

Thanks as always to Benny and Susan who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and for her sug­ges­tion that inspired this pod­cast. Thanks also to Ram, Hallow’s maiden, Rabi­aka­ma­ran, Gatepc, BenH, MikeS, Dabow,‚ Inukamori, svant­land & PKMax who recently joined the photography.ca forum and posted a few times. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , ,

Presenting photography to galleries — Photography podcast #53

September 19, 2008 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #53 talks about how to present your pho­tog­ra­phy port­fo­lio to pho­tog­ra­phy gal­leries. There’s a right way and a wrong way to approach gal­leries with your work and this pod­cast offers up a few tips on what the right way is. One cru­cial tip that I’ll men­tion right here is to make SURE your work fits with what the gallery is show­ing. If it doesn’t, don’t waste your time and choose another gallery.

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Robert Miller gallery (New York) — Thanks Karl
Stephen Bul­ger gallery (Toronto) — Thanks Jes­sica
Bul­ger gallery port­fo­lio sub­mis­sion guidelines

Thanks as always to Benny who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and to Spriter who recently joined the photography.ca forum and posted a few times. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts Tagged With: , , ,

Interview with Kevin Kubota — Photography podcast #52

September 16, 2008 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #52 fea­tures an inter­view with pho­tog­ra­pher Kevin Kub­ota. Kevin is prob­a­bly most well known for his pho­to­shop actions but he is also a wed­ding as well as a fine art pho­tog­ra­pher. In this inter­view we talk about Kevin’s work, his gear, and his work­flow. We also talk a bit about Pho­to­shop actions in gen­eral and dis­cuss if using them is cheating.

Here’s a quick snap­shot of Parc-Lafontaine where a lit­tle vis­i­tor came to say hi while I was record­ing the intro and con­clu­sion to this pod­cast. That’s right, my out­door sound stu­dio includes wildlife :)

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Kevin Kubota’s Actions
Assign­ment forum on Photography.ca
Adobe Pho­to­shop tuto­ri­als and work­flow
– http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/tutorials
– http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop
– http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/cs3/pdfs/CS3_Web_Workflow_Guide.pdf

Thanks as always to Susan who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and to the fol­low­ing peo­ple that recently joined the photography.ca forum and posted a few times; pslove, Joe­Mezz, natal­iey­oung, nekken, bhvi­jayku­mar, ret, swee­t­o­bliv­ion, scale­speeder, mind­forge, bear, seal­hunter, Paula­Lynn, Wayne, reijo, fire209, Dwayne Oakes, trueart­spho­tog­ra­phy, BunD, easyp­ick­ings and Dis­rupt Stu­dios. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

If you wanted to review the pod­cast in Itunes it would be most appre­ci­ated. You’ll need to down­load Itunes for free and you can search for the pod­cast if you don’t know where it is. You can search the itunes store for pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — pho­tog­ra­phy blog and you’ll see my name (Marko Kulik). You’ll see the icon with the word photography.ca and under that, you’ll see cus­tomer reviews with a link to post a review. It takes a few min­utes to do this (and you’ll need reg­is­ter for an apple ID) so I thank you in advance for tak­ing the time. If you know itunes well, you can also do a power search from the quick links menu on the front page of the Itunes store and it will be faster.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcast Interviews, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , ,

Cleaning camera lenses — cleaning cameras — Photography podcast #51

September 1, 2008 By 2 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #51 talks about how to clean the out­side of your cam­era, your cam­era lenses and the inside of your cam­era. I also share some tips on avoid­ing all this dirt in the first place. Spe­cial thanks to Kate from our pho­tog­ra­phy forum who sug­gested this podcast.

NOTE: When I talk about UV lenses I’m actu­ally refer­ring to a screw on UV fil­ters. My bad.

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Kodak lens cleaner
Zeiss clean­ing fluid

Thanks as always to Rifter, Susan, Jon, LanceJ, and scorpio_e, Begin­ner, candyman123, trot­ters, Nata­nis and dclark‚ for recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

Photography tips (recap) — Photography podcast #50

August 18, 2008 By 5 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #50 recaps many of the pho­tog­ra­phy tips talked about in the past 49 pho­tog­ra­phy pod­casts. Here are some quick tips talked about in this pod­cast cho­sen from pre­vi­ous photo pod­casts; Watch­ing the back­ground — depth of field — fill flash — expo­sure in pho­tog­ra­phy — paint­ing with light — fram­ing your sub­ject — inten­tional blur — polar­iz­ing and neu­tral grad fil­ters — dig­i­tal in cam­era fil­ters — pat­terns — lead­ing lines — the rule of thirds in pho­tog­ra­phy — delib­er­ate under­ex­po­sure — shutter-speeds - using shad­ows cre­atively — wide angle lenses — pos­ing mod­els — using reflec­tors — stu­dio setups for begin­ners — cheap macro pho­tog­ra­phy — one light por­traits — low-light pho­tog­ra­phy — using his­tograms — your rights as a pho­tog­ra­pher — sim­ple back light­ing out­doors — bright­ness and other dis­trac­tions — pho­tograph­ing babies — dodg­ing and burn­ing in pho­tog­ra­phy.

I’d also like to thank Las­zlo, Dominic Fuiz­zotto, Dita Kubin, Ann Dahlgren, Raphael Gold­chain, Vicky Reed, Jolene Mon­heim and Andre Nan­tel for the infor­ma­tive inter­views that they let me record with them. More inter­views are already sched­uled for future podcasts.

Here’s a quick snap­shot of a small part of Parc-Lafontaine where I have been recently record­ing these podcasts.

Thanks as always to Lan­don, Benny, San­dra 543, Man­a­ma­rak, Clau­dia regina, destruc­tivemi­crowave, ratio, kath­leen, taffy, kiddo, dag, trhoads, megster85, langdon9720, Richard Annable, kate and Ash­muddy for recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

If you wanted to review the pod­cast in Itunes it would be most appre­ci­ated. You’ll need to down­load Itunes for free and you can search for the pod­cast if you don’t know where it is. You can search the itunes store for pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — pho­tog­ra­phy blog and you’ll see my name (Marko Kulik). You’ll see the icon with the word photography.ca and under that, you’ll see cus­tomer reviews with a link to post a review. It takes a few min­utes to do this (and you’ll need reg­is­ter for an apple ID) so I thank you in advance for tak­ing the time. If you know itunes well, you can also do a power search from the quick links menu on the front page of the Itunes store and it will be faster.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips Tagged With: , ,

Dodging and burning in photography — Photography podcast #49

July 31, 2008 By 9 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #49 dis­cusses dodg­ing and burn­ing your pho­tographs. Dodg­ing means mak­ing parts of a photo lighter and burn­ing in makes parts of your pho­to­graph darker. Almost ALL pho­tographs require some dodg­ing and burn­ing. The images below by Yise­haq are great exam­ples. Look how much more alive image 2 looks after some dodg­ing and burning.

In terms of the actual tech­niques used to dodge and burn a photo you can try this one if you have Pho­to­shop. Cre­ate a new layer and set your blend­ing mode to soft-light or over­lay. Use an opac­ity of around 4–15%. Use a SOFT paint brush with these set­tings. To burn (darken) use black as the fore­ground colour in the palette. To dodge (lighten) use white as the fore­ground colour.

This pod­cast was inspired by Yise­haq a mem­ber of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum. Feel free to join — it’s fun and free! This pod­cast was recorded in a park. Please let me know if you found the ambi­ent noises too distracting.

Many thanks to Yise­haq for let­ting me use the above images of the Blue Nile as a teach­ing tool!

Post edited August 18 2008 — Adding 2 of my own images to fur­ther illus­trate the dif­fer­ence between the image after it comes out of the cam­era ver­sus the dodged and burned result. The result looks much live­lier and the main rea­son is the local dodg­ing and burn­ing. These are of the grand canyon and they are the same images from the pod­cast on delib­er­ately under­ex­pos­ing your images.

deliberate underexposure podcast
Image 1 of the Grand Canyon (leveling/quick colour balance)


Image 2 — after includ­ing quite a bit of dodg­ing and burn­ing and a quick sharpen.
After a while you’ll learn to see the poten­tial tones just wait­ing to come out.

Links/topics men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Orig­i­nal thread with Yisehaq’s images and com­ments
Photo assign­ment forum on Photography.ca

Thanks as always to Benoitc23, Benny and DeSte­fanoPho­tog­ra­phy for recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, podcasting Tagged With: , , , ,

Baby — newborn photography — Photography podcast #48

July 22, 2008 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #48 dis­cusses baby and new­born pho­tog­ra­phy. We talk about what light­ing to use. We also talk about good posi­tions for babies as well as give tips on ideas on how to make your baby pho­tog­ra­phy more inter­est­ing. This pod­cast was inspired by demontecarlo3 a mem­ber of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum. Feel free to join — it’s fun and free! Final note — this pod­cast was recorded on a rainy day in the park. Please let me know if you found the ambi­ent noises too distracting.

Many thanks to Dominic Fuiz­zotto for let­ting me use these images.

Links/topics men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Dis­trac­tions in photographs

Thanks as always to Benny, Ed and Sergey for recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , ,

Flash sync speeds — Photography podcast #47

July 11, 2008 By 7 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #47 talks about flash sync speeds. We talk about what the flash sync speed is (it’s also called x-sync) and how very impor­tant it is espe­cially when you are tak­ing day­light por­traits out­doors. We also talk about high-speed flash sync as well as answer Sergey’s ques­tion about why the high speed flash sync is not work­ing with the trans­mit­ters that he is using.

Links/topics men­tioned in this pod­cast:
My sleepy dog pho­to­graph
Sunny 16 rule
ST-E2 trans­mit­ter
Canon 580 flash series with the OC-E3 off-camera shoe cord

Thanks as always to Benny, Mer­man, Tmat, Yowzah, Tim and Sergey for recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

Brightness problems — distracting elements in photographs — Photography podcast #46

June 29, 2008 By 8 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #46 talks about being really care­ful about NOT includ­ing dis­tract­ing ele­ments in your pho­tographs. The eye nat­u­rally wan­ders toward the bright ele­ments in pho­tographs so being aware of bright­ness prob­lems, unwanted high­lights and other dis­trac­tions will improve your photography.

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Tran­script to pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #1 — being aware of the back­ground
His­tograms in dig­i­tal photography

The 2 images below show how bright­ness issues and dis­tract­ing ele­ments can take the viewer’s eye away from the sub­ject. Shot 1 is unma­nip­u­lated. Shot 2 has the brighter ele­ments burned in (dark­ened) very quickly just to illus­trate the point. Many thanks to mer­man from our pho­tog­ra­phy forum for allow­ing me to use his pho­to­graph as a teach­ing tool.

brightness problem in photographs

brightness problem corrected in photograph


Thanks as always to Cyba­sumo, Chris, Sergey and De3montecarlo for recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , , , ,

Using backlighting outdoors — Photography Podcast #45

May 30, 2008 By 2 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #45 talks about how to use back­light­ing out­doors. We talk about tak­ing that clas­sic photo on the beach in front of a sun­set and doing it prop­erly. We also describe how to take a nice por­trait using back­light­ing and the whole pod­cast and is based some­what on an email from Cindy;

“This sum­mer my fam­ily is going to the beach. Of course, I want to take lots of pic­tures. What is the best time of day? I love sun­set pic­tures, but how do I take pic­tures of the peo­ple with their backs to the ocean (sun in back­ground etc.) and see their faces clearly? ”

The images below (done really quickly with almost no post pro­cess­ing) clearly show the dif­fer­ences you can obtain using back­light­ing and flash at dif­fer­ent set­tings. Per­son­ally I like the Minus 2 shot the best. You best see the dif­fer­ences in flash out­put by look­ing at the face.

using backlighting and flash outdoors

Pho­tog­ra­phy links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Acces­sories that you can use to hold reflec­tors etc. — pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast 35
Pho­tog­ra­phy and the law

Thanks as always to Cindy, Jason and Alex Wil­son for recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries, Photography podcasts, podcasting Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Directing and relaxing models — Photography podcast #44

April 30, 2008 By 2 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #44 talks about how to direct mod­els in pho­tog­ra­phy photo shoots. This pod­cast is based on a sug­ges­tion (thanks for the sug­ges­tion Bill!) by fel­low pod­cast lis­tener Bill who wrote an email asking;

“I’d love to hear a pod­cast in a bit more detail about “direct­ing” ordi­nary peo­ple in a por­trait ses­sion. I tend to start out ok, but some­times sort of, choke, I guess, and then for­get every­thing I know about tak­ing pho­tos, pos­ing peo­ple, and walk­ing while chew­ing gum :) “

Pho­tog­ra­phy links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Pos­ing mod­els in pho­tog­ra­phy — pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast 28
Jeff Cur­tožs His­tory of Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast

Thanks as always to Bill, Andre_f, Michael, and Joseph for recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

Photographs — should we change the word — Photography podcast #43

April 14, 2008 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #43‚asks the ques­tion do we need to change the word pho­to­graph because it is not descrip­tive enough. With pho­tographs being so heav­ily edited in Pho­to­shop, do we need more spe­cific terms (or a new lex­i­con) to describe what kinds of pho­tographs we are look­ing at?‚

FYI — Next pod­cast will be less philo­soph­i­cal and more instructional/practical.

Pho­tog­ra­phy links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Post pro­cess­ing thread

Thanks as always to Vlad,‚Andre_f,‚deb­bieT, ‚Elio and Alen for‚recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, podcasting Tagged With: , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »